Bird of Passage

by Catherine Czerkawska

  There was a moment’s silence. It was always like this, thought Kirsty. It was as though her grandfather had conjured up images from the sea and the land around them. It was a kind of magic; he took the memories of the island, the sticks and stones, the shells and feathers and water, and transformed them into words. It was an old skill and few could manage it like Alasdair.

  After a while, Finn said ‘That tune…’

  ‘What tune?’ asked Kirsty.

  ‘The tune that the earl played… are there really tunes like that?’

  ‘A melody to enchant a woman? Of course,’ said Alasdair. ‘There are all kinds of fiddle tunes that are as old as the hills, and some of them have been passed down from the fairies themselves. I’ll let you hear it, if you like.’

  Back at Dunshee, Alasdair invited Finn into the kitchen. Isabel was away on a shopping trip to the mainland with the minister’s wife and the ladies of the Guild, so there was nobody to object. Alasdair got the old fiddle down from its nail, tuned it up, and played a plaintive melody, which he said was a fairy song .

  ‘I would like…’ Finn began, and then hesitated.

  ‘What would you like?’ asked Alasdair.

  ‘Nothing. No.’ He turned to Kirsty. ‘Can you play that?’

  ‘The fiddle?’ She shook her head.

  Alasdair laughed. ‘Not for lack of encouragement. I always hoped she would try, but she has no patience with it. None at all. She sings sweetly enough but she is no musician. Why? Would you like to learn, Finn? My wee Kirsty will do nothing but make pictures.’

  Finn coloured and looked down at the floor. ‘I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you do it?’

  ‘I’ve no brains, mister.’

  ‘Who told you you’d no brains?’

  ‘They tell me at the school. Plug ugly and pig ignorant. That’s me.’

  There was a sudden silence in the room. Alasdair gazed at Finn. Kirsty could see that he looked very angry. But not with Finn.

  ‘Why would you say that?’

  ‘Because it’s true.’

  That’s what they always told him. And he was glad of it. It was safer that way. Nobody looked twice at you if you were plug ugly and pig ignorant. One of the herd. That was the trick of it. That was the way you survived. Look what happened if you were different. Look what had happened to Francie. But he mustn’t think about Francie. Or any of that. Keep your mind on your work. Keep quiet. Survive.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Alasdair interrupted his thoughts. ‘You’ve brains enough for two in that head of yours. Look – do you want to learn?’

  ‘Am I not too old?’

  ‘Aye, you are a bit. But I can teach you to busk a tune as well as the next man.’

  Which was why Alasdair began to teach Finn the rudiments of playing the fiddle. He would never be particularly good at it, but he enjoyed the process of learning. He seldom played for anyone except Kirsty and Alasdair. After a while, he found that he could coax a simple tune out of the instrument and when, some years later, he mastered the fairy melody, nobody was more delighted with his pupil’s success than Alasdair, except perhaps for Kirsty herself.

  CHAPTER NINE

  That summer, Kirsty left the island primary school. In late August, she started school on the mainland. Finn was still on the farm, although even the late tattie harvest was nearly done and it was almost time for the visiting Irish to leave too.

  ‘I’m looking forward to going to the mainland,’ she told him. ‘Looking forward to the company.’ There was a hostel for everyone who had too far to travel each day.

  ‘Am I not company?’ he asked.

  ‘When you’re here you are. But you’re away all winter.’

  ‘And you come home at weekends?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Aren’t you scared?’

  ‘Why would I be scared?’

  On the first day of term, when Alasdair and Isabel took her to the ferry, Finn rose early and walked down to the harbour to see her off. He needed to see her leave, needed to be able to watch until she was out of sight. He couldn’t have explained this to anyone, but it seemed essential to do it. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would be gone to what she called ‘the big school’ before he had to go back to Ireland, that he wouldn’t be able to spend his few remaining evenings after work in her company, that he must wait for the weekend to see her again, one last weekend before the tattie howkers went away. And he was all too aware that he might not be coming back. Nothing was certain. Nothing predictable. Nothing was ever safe.

  It was a fine August morning, with just a hint of a chill in the air, an intimation of things to come. The year had turned. He lurked behind the fuel store, sitting on a pile of old fishing nets with bits of dried weed and crab claws entangled in them, until he saw the farm jeep come rattling down the hill. Kirsty got out, and Alasdair shouldered her bag and carried it aboard for her. She looked smart and small, dressed in her new school uniform, the blazer several sizes too big for her. Isabel got out of the jeep, gave her daughter a hug and a kiss and then stood on the jetty, hands in the pockets of her navy blue cardigan. Kirsty turned back and waved, and Isabel raised her hand and blew a kiss. Finn had a sudden pang of some indefinable emotion – a sore place. Nobody ever waved him off. Nor had they. Not since his mother, all those years ago, when he had first started at the school in Dublin. He thought about Sister Rosalie with her pink cheeks and the funny white winged head-dress of the Sisters of Charity. He remembered Sister Rosalie saying, ‘Come along now, Finn!’ and his mother standing at the railing, smiling and waving, with a hankie clutched in her other hand. Wiping her eyes. ‘Just a bit of dust in my eye. I’ll be here at home time, Finny!’

  Not since then.

  Alasdair got back in the jeep and backed up to the turning place. The ferry was already moving away from the jetty. Kirsty was on deck with a handful of other children, all older than herself. Only when the jeep was well up the road did Finn emerge cautiously from behind the fuel store. He walked down onto the jetty and stood there for a while, watching. Then, when he was sure that nobody could see him, he raised his hand, and waved, sketchily, self consciously. Did he imagine it, or did Kirsty detach herself from the huddle of children and wave back at him? Had it really happened? He couldn’t be sure, and the ferry was too far off now, leaving a trail of foam in its wake. He watched until it was a silhouette, heading for the mainland, and then turned and jogged back to the farm, taking shortcuts over the muddy fields, mindful of unfriendly dogs and barbed wire and other hazards. He would be late, but he didn’t think that Alasdair would mind too much, and – for the next week or so – it was Alasdair he was working for, rather than Micky Terrans.

  After the one-roomed island school, the size of the big school bewildered Kirsty. So many people. So much noise. Some of the children were miserably homesick and cried themselves to sleep in the hostel every night, although the rooms were comfortable and cheerfully painted, four beds to a room, with a bedside locker, a desk and wardrobe for each girl. There was a matron if you were feeling ill or even sad. The food was plain but plentiful. And there was always bread and jam or peanut butter, fresh milk and cups of tea and cocoa for those that wanted them. All in all, it was bearable. Kirsty was homesick too but she would have died rather than let anybody see her distress. She was afraid of being bullied, had heard tales of newcomers being beaten or having their heads forced into lavatories. But alongside Finn’s infrequent references to his own school, these worries seemed insignificant. Besides, none of them proved to be true and perhaps because of her red hair, the other children credited her with a fiery temper.

  ‘See that Kirsty Galbreath!’ they said. ‘She’s mad!’

  She made a few new friends but, as far as Kirsty was concerned, the best thing about her new school was Miss Wilson. Jane Wilson taught art, was not long out of college herself and was still enthusiastic about her subject and her pupils. She was slender and striking and she wore fashio
nable clothes. She stood out like a tropical bird among the other teachers.

  ‘They didn’t make teachers like that in our day,’ said the fathers, on parents’ night, remembering fierce, middle-aged ladies in lisle stockings.

  ‘They don’t even make them like that nowadays,’ said the mothers, eyeing up the other female staff members in their grey pleated skirts and neat blouses.

  Miss Wilson wore her dark hair long and smooth and straight. In winter she dressed in short skirts and patterned tights and brightly coloured polo necks, but when she waited for her bus outside the school gates, she wore a long black coat with a fur collar and fur around the hem. She called it her ‘Zhivago Coat’. Julie Christie, as Lara, had worn one like it, in the film. Kirsty found it immensely romantic and wanted one for herself.

  The following weekend, Kirsty was so full of the school and the hostel and her new experiences that it was Sunday afternoon before she realised that Finn would be going away so soon. They were in their usual spot, up at Hill Top Town, when he said, suddenly, ‘I hope I’ll see you next year.’

  She gazed at him in utter dismay. ‘Is it this week? Is it this week you’re going, Finn?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to tell you.’

  ‘I wasn’t paying attention. Oh, Finn, I’m so sorry. I hate it that you have to go away. Why can’t you just stay on the farm?’

  ‘How can I? I have to go!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I do. Because that’s the way it is.’

  ‘But you’ll be back next spring, won’t you?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He was knocking a pebble against a granite boulder, striking sparks. A faint acrid whiff of sulphur came off it.

  ‘What do you mean, maybe?’

  ‘I can’t say for sure. I have to go where I’m sent. Where the work is.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She didn’t want to have to think about this right now. She wanted everything to go on just as before, with Finn coming back, like the swallows, every spring.

  ‘Listen, I’ll write to you,’ she said. ‘I can write to you from the school.’

  ‘I don’t have an address. Besides, you can’t,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t write to me.’ There was panic in his voice.

  ‘Why on earth not? Our English teacher said that we should have a pen pal. He said it would improve our English, writing letters. Nobody’s going to mind.’

  ‘They wouldn’t mind here. But they would mind in Ireland.’

  ‘Why? Is it because you would have a girl writing to you?’

  ‘Well, that too.’

  ‘Can’t you tell them I’m your cousin?’

  He started to laugh. ‘You have no idea, do you? No notion at all!’

  ‘Because you don’t tell me anything. I know nothing about your school, Finn!’

  ‘They know fine I have no cousin over here. And it wouldn’t make any difference if you were a cousin. ‘Twouldn’t matter if you were a girl or a boy. ‘Twould just be the fact of my getting letters from here. And they would certainly stop me coming.’

  ‘Would they?’

  ‘I don’t talk about you or about your grandfather or the farm or anything. Don’t you understand? I say as little as possible. And you mustn’t ever write to me. Do you hear me now?’

  ‘I hear you, but I can’t see the sense in it. And I’ll hate it. I have so much I want to tell you!’

  ‘Then write away, but don’t post the letters. Just let me see them when I come back. If I come back.’

  Kirsty felt her heart contract in fear. ‘What do you mean, if you come back?’

  ‘I’ll be sixteen later on this year, Kirsty. It depends where they send me. I expect I’ll be put to work on a farm somewhere. If I am, then I may just be able to get to the tatties next summer. But it may not be here and I may not even be sent to a farm. I could be put into a factory or something’

  ‘But could you not come anyway? Once you’re sixteen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, helplessly. ‘I don’t know what I’ll be able to do until the time comes. We go where we’re sent. We have to.’

  ‘You mean like Francie. Or Michael. Maybe he’ll be able to call himself Michael, now. That would be good, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Though I must admit I’ll always think of him as Francie. Won’t you?’

  Finn wouldn’t meet her eyes. He looked beyond her, over the sea.

  ‘Do you know where he is, Finn? How is he getting on? Will you maybe go and see him when you finish school?’

  ‘I won’t be able to see him.’

  ‘I didn’t think I’d miss him, but I have. Haven’t you? You must miss him!’

  He nodded, miserably.

  ‘I really think you ought to see if you can get in touch with him. Then you could tell my mum where he is and she could write to him. Wherever he is, they can’t mind him getting letters. Not now he’s older. She could send him something at Christmas.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I can’t find him, Kirsty.’

  ‘I’m sure you could, if you tried.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  ‘Because he isn’t anywhere.’

  ‘What do you mean, he isn’t anywhere? He has to be somewhere!’

  ‘I mean what I say.’

  ‘So where is he?’

  ‘Nowhere.’

  ‘You mean he’s still at the school?’

  ‘No, you feckin’ idiot. I mean he’s dead and buried. He should have left the school, but he died.’

  ‘Died? ‘ She rolled the word around in her mouth, tasting it, the finality of it. The impossibility of it. ‘But he was young. Young people don’t... die.’

  ‘Sometimes they do. Your father died.’

  ‘But he wasn’t so young. He was all grown up, at least. Not like Francie. So what happened? Was he ill? What did he die of?’

  ‘He wasn’t ill. Or no more ill than usual. There was an accident, Kirsty.’

  ‘What kind of accident?’

  He was reluctant to continue. He should never have started this, never have told her. But when she persisted, he said, ‘He had a fall.’

  ‘A fall?’

  ‘Down the stairs. He fell down these big stone stairs at the school. There’s a stairwell in the middle of the building and he fell down it in the night.’

  ‘I don’t understand how that could happen!’

  ‘He was always a bit unsteady. A bit... wobbly. You know that.’

  She stared at him, shaking her head.

  ‘Not that wobbly. What was he doing? Where was he going? Was he trying to run away? Was that it?’

  She understood nothing about it. And he wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. How could he tell her about the night times? The darkness? The things that went on under cover of night? He could hardly bear to think of it, let alone speak about it, it gave him such a terrible sense of shame. The chosen boys would be summoned out of the dormitories in the dark, shaken roughly awake, dragged out of bed, half asleep sometimes, confused, sickly and not able to defend themselves. How could they defend themselves? Finn was never chosen. His good fortune. Plug ugly, that was why. If he was ever woken, and dragged out, it was only for a beating. And that was bad enough. Nightshirts rolled up. Naked from the waist down, with your bits dangling. Bend over! A line of them sometimes. The brother, rolling up his sleeve. Practically jumping up and down in his excitement. The cane, thrashing away, swishing through the air, and the sting of it, the heavy breathing.

  But it was worse for the others. Especially boys like Francie. That soft face. Beautiful, like a girl. The way it had been when Finn had first met him. Although not later. Not the sad, shambling creature he had become. Night times. The darkness. The things that went on under cover of night. Beatings and whippings and much worse. The cries and groans. The way Francis would crawl back into bed when it was all over, hunched in pain, coughing, his hands covering himself. Not speaking. Not say
ing anything about it to anyone. Because it was a sin. You mustn’t speak about it, because it was a terrible sin. Not even in confession. It was unforgiveable. ‘My fault,’ he said to Finn. ‘My fault.’

  ‘How can it be your fault?’ Finn had whispered in the dark.

  ‘Because I’m an occasion of sin.

  And then, the night they had heard it. The single, high pitched cry and the terrible silence, followed by a muted thud. The stairwell in the middle of the building was deep and broad. The dormitories high up, at the top of the house. The boys had huddled in the doorway, listening, listening, while outside they heard running footsteps, the swish of robes on stone floors, whispers, a dozen urgent whispers, back and forth, question and answer. Ah God, ah God. Francis O’Brien.

  In the morning, Brother Michael, his face grim, had gathered them together, told them that there had been a terrible accident. One of the boys had fallen from the upper floor, fallen into the stairwell. He had been walking about in the night, perhaps in search of a glass of water. Perhaps he hadn’t been feeling well. They all knew that he was a sickly soul. Poor Francis O’Brien, God rest his soul. He had been taken to hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival. It was a sad day for all of them. And they would say a prayer for the repose of his soul. They would say it now. All together. O God, the Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful, grant to the souls of Thy servants departed, the remission of all their sins, that, by our help and pious supplications, they may obtain that pardon which they have always desired; who livest and reignest, world without end...

  Finn didn’t believe any of it. He mouthed the words of the prayer, but he didn’t believe that either. Give them O Lord, eternal rest. And let perpetual light shine upon them. May they rest in peace...

  Francis was at peace, that much was true, and no prayers from the likes of Brother Michael would make a blind bit of difference. But no matter how much Finn thought about the accident, he didn’t know how it had happened. Francis never left the dormitory at night unless summoned. He would have been much too frightened to go wandering about in the dark.